Month: January 2018

Last Christmas, my husband decided it was time to gift me with the benefits of modern technology and bought me a cordless vacuum cleaner. He said it was going to relieve me from the pain of having to bow down to plug and unplug my old vacuum every time I changed the room. I unboxed the thing and immediately realised I wasn’t going to use it, although it seemed much lighter and maneuverable than the big canister we had for decades. Some of you may wonder why I disliked it so much. Here it is.

We own a big family house, with grandchildren and nephews around all the time, so crumbles, hair and all sorts of debris constantly menacing to pile up on every corner. This means I need a big bag on the vacuum so I can fit in everything the machine picks up, and the bag on this cordless model was simply too small. This way, while I didn’t have to stop for unplugging the machine, emptying the bag would still make me take a few trips to the trash can and back.

Of course, my husband was determined to make me use it and I didn’t want to get into a fight or hurt his feelings so I gave it a go a couple of times, but that only increased my disatisfaction. Like I said, we have a big house, and by the time I was through with half of the first floor, the battery was gone, and I was obliged to drop everything and wait a lot of hours for it to recharge. Not only that made me feel like I was wasting time, but it became something very tiresome for an old lady like me.

Finally, and this could be just my cleanliness obsession, but I had the impression that this vacuum was made for light cleaning. I had to make multiple passes to be sure I had picked up most of the dirt, but I never felt completely satisfied with the work it was doing. My husband explained that it had something to do with the batteries, which couldn’t power the motor enough, so I began wondering why on earth would anybody consider having such a weak machine. Well, I complained about it so much, nobody in the house dared to contradict me and I was free to return to my old, canister friend.